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  THE VEHEMENT FLAME

  A NOVEL

  BY MARGARET DELAND

  AUTHOR OF DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE, OLD CHESTER TALES, ETC.

  1922

  TO LORIN:

  Together, so many years ago--seven, I think, or eight--you and I plannedthis story. The first chapters had the help of your criticism ... then,I had to go on alone, urged by the memory of your interest. But all theblunders are mine, not yours; and any merits are yours, not mine. Thatit has been written, in these darkened years, has been because yourhappy interest still helped me.

  MARGARET_May 12th, 1922_

  THE VEHEMENT FLAME

  CHAPTER I

  _Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coalsthereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame._

  _THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6._

  There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd,than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!...

  The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay inthe blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her darkeyes, was embodied Joy! The joy of the warm earth, of the sunshineglinting on the slipping ripples of the river and sifting through thecream-white blossoms of the locust which reared its sheltering branchesover their heads; the joy of mating insects and birds, of the wholeexulting, creating universe!--the unselfconscious, irresponsible, whollybeautiful Joy of passion which is without apprehension or humor. Theeyes of the woman who sat in the grass beside this very young man,answered his eyes with Love. But it was a more human love than his,because there was doubt in its exultation....

  The boy took out his watch and looked at it.

  "We have been married," he said, "exactly fifty-four minutes."

  "I can't believe it!" she said.

  "If I love you like this after fifty-four minutes of married life, howdo you suppose I shall feel after fifty-four years of it?" He flung anarm about her waist, and hid his face against her knee. "We are married,"he said, in a smothered voice.

  She bent over and kissed his thick hair, silently. At which he sat upand looked at her with blue, eager eyes.

  "It just came over me! Oh, Eleanor, suppose I hadn't got you? You said'No' six times. You certainly did behave very badly," he said, showinghis white teeth in a broad grin.

  "Some people win say I behaved very badly when I said 'Yes.'"

  "Tell 'em to go to thunder! What does Mrs. Maurice Curtis (doesn't thatsound pretty fine?) care for a lot of old cats? Don't we _know_ that weare in heaven?" He caught her hand and crushed it against his mouth. "Iwish," he said, very low, "I almost wish I could die, now, here! At yourfeet. It seems as if I couldn't live, I am so--" He stopped. So--what?Words are ridiculously inadequate things!... "Happiness" wasn't the nameof that fire in his breast, Happiness? "Why, it's God," he said tohimself; "_God._" Aloud, he said, again, "We are married!"

  She did not speak--she was a creature of alluring silences--she just puther hand in his. Suddenly she began to sing; there was a very noblequality in the serene sweetness of her voice:

  "O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down Through the clear windows of the morning, ten Thine angel eyes upon our western isle, Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!"

  That last word rose like a flight of wings into the blue air. Herhusband looked at her; for a compelling instant his eyes dredged thedepths of hers, so that all the joyous, frightened woman in herretreated behind a flutter of laughter.

  "'O Spring!'" he repeated; "_we_ are Spring, Nelly--you and I.... I'llnever forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazesit was,--do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then inMrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-a-brac things around!Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder juttingfrom the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when youcame to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky--" He stopped, pulled three blades ofgrass and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and hisvoice was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw theswitches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and hadto crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley--I met you! Eleanor!Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that--just falling down inmathematics--changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyessobered. "I happened to come to Mercer--and, you are my wife." Hisfingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instanthe threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in apreposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped thebraided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her fingerfor fifty-four minutes, kissed it--and the palm of her hand--and said,"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me.I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give usthe rest."

  She smiled;

  ".... And let our windsKiss thy perfumed garments; let us tasteThy morn and evening breath!..."

  "Oh--_stop_! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on hisface, he kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkledwith locust blossoms....

  But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs.Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he wassaying, "I've rescued her!"

  "Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only,she never understood me--Maurice! Be careful! There's a littleant--don't step on it."

  She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move hisheel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxiousgentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful.Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt:

  "Of course she couldn't understand _you_! You might as well expect ahigh-tempered cow to understand a violin solo."

  "How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose she'sgot my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!"

  "Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now."

  Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probablyexperiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letterannouncing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very youngman.

  "No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And againthey were silent--islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, withthe warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms infolding them, and intheir ears the endless murmur of the river. Then Eleanor said, suddenly:"Maurice!--Mr. Houghton? What will _he_ do when he hears? He'll think an'elopement' is dreadful."

  He chuckled. "Uncle Henry?--He isn't really my uncle, but I call himthat;--he won't rage. He'll just whistle. People of his age have towhistle, to show they're alive. I have reason to believe," the cub said,"that he 'whistled' when I flunked in my mid-years. Well, I felt sorry,myself--on his account," Maurice said, with the serious and amiablecondescension of youth. "I hated to jar him. But--gosh! I'd have flunkedA B C's, for _this_. Nelly, I tell you heaven hasn't got anything onthis! As for Uncle Henry, I'll write him to-morrow that I had to getmarried sort of in a hurry, because Mrs. Newbolt wanted to haul you offto Europe. He'll understand. He's white. And he won't really mind--afterthe first biff;--that will take him below the belt, I suppose, poor oldUncle Henry! But after that, he'll adore you. He adores beauty."

  Her delight in his praise made her almost beautiful; but she protestedthat he was a goose. Then she took the little grass ring from her fingerand slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," shesaid. "How about Mrs. Houghton?"

  "She'll love you! She's a pe
ach. And little Skeezics--"

  "Who is Skeezics?"

  "Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment ofannouncing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when shegrew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh.She'll adore you, too."

  "I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like--anelopement."

  "They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life!I'm afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said,ruefully; "always doing fool things, you know,--I mean when I was a boy.And he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid I'd take a wildflight in actresses."

  "'_Wild_' flight? What will he call--" She caught her breath.

  "He'll call it a 'wild flight in angels'!" he said.

  The word made her put a laughing and protesting hand (which he kissed)over his lips. Then she said that she remembered Mr. Houghton: "I methim a long time ago; when--when you were a little boy."

  "And yet here you are, 'Mrs. Maurice Curtis!' Isn't it supreme?"he demanded. The moment was so beyond words that it made himsophomoric--which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman yearhad been halted by those examinations, which had so "jarred" hisguardian. "I'll be twenty in September," he said. Evidently the thoughtof his increasing years gave him pleasure. That Eleanor's years werealso increasing did not occur to him; and no wonder, for, compared topeople like Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, Eleanor was young enough!--onlythirty-nine. It was back in the 'nineties that she had met her husband'sguardian, who, in those days, had been the owner of a cotton mill inMercer, but who now, instead of making money, cultivated potatoes (andtried to paint). Eleanor knew the Houghtons when they were Mercer millfolk, and, as she said, this charming youngster--living then inPhiladelphia--had been "a little boy"; now, here he was, her husband for"fifty-four minutes." And she was almost forty, and he was nineteen.That Henry Houghton, up on his mountain farm, pottering about in hisbig, dusty studio, and delving among his potatoes, would whistle, was tobe expected.

  "But who cares?" Maurice said. "It isn't his funeral."

  "He'll think it's yours," she retorted, with a little laugh. She was notmuch given to laughter. Her life had been singularly monotonous and,having seen very little of the world, she had that self-distrust whichis afraid to laugh unless other people are laughing, too. She taughtsinging at Fern Hill, a private school in Mercer's suburbs. She did notcare for the older pupils, but she was devoted to the very little girls.She played wonderfully on the piano, and suffered from indigestion; herface was at times almost beautiful; she had a round, full chin, and alovely red lower lip; her forehead was very white, with soft, dark hairrippling away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talkedvery little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk--living, asshe did, with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no closefriends;--her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she didnot inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt'selderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave hergood advice; so it was a negative sort of life. Indeed, her sky terrier,Bingo, and her laundress, Mrs. O'Brien, to whose crippled baby grandsonshe was endlessly kind, knew her better than any of the people amongwhom she lived. When Maurice Curtis, cramming in Mercer because Destinyhad broken his tutor's leg there, and presenting (with the boredreluctance of a boy) a letter of introduction from his guardian to Mrs.Newbolt--when Maurice met Mrs. Newbolt's niece, something happened.Perhaps because he felt her starved longing for personal happiness, orperhaps her obvious pleasure in listening, silently, to his eager talk,touched his young vanity; whatever the reason was, the boy wasfascinated by her. He had ("cussing," as he had expressed it to himself)accepted an invitation to dine with the "ancient dame" (again hisphrase!)--and behold the reward of merit:--the niece!--a gentle,handsome woman, whose age never struck him, probably because her mindwas as immature as his own. Before dinner was over Eleanor'ssilence--silence is very moving to youth, for who knows what ithides?--and her deep, still eyes, lured him like a mystery. Then, afterdinner ("a darned good dinner," Maurice had conceded to himself) thecalm niece sang, and instantly he knew that it was Beauty which hid insilence--and he was in love with her! He had dined with her on Tuesday,called on Wednesday, proposed on Friday;--it was all quite like SolomonGrundy! except that, although she had fallen in love with him almost asinstantly as he had fallen in love with her, she had, over and overagain, refused him. During the period of her refusals the boy's loveglowed like a furnace; it brought both power and maturity into hisfresh, ardent, sensitive face. He threw every thought to thewinds--except the thought of rescuing his princess from Mrs. Newbolt'simprisoning bric-a-brac. As for his "cramming" the tutor into whosehands Mr. Houghton had committed his ward's very defective trigonometryand economics, Mr. Bradley, held in Mercer because of an annoyingaccident, said to himself that his intentions were honest, but if Curtisdidn't turn up for three days running, he would utilize the time hispupil was paying for by writing a paper on "The Fourth Dimension."

  Maurice was in some new dimension himself! Except "old Brad," he knewalmost no one in Mercer, so he had no confidant; and because hispassion was, perforce, inarticulate, his candid forehead gatheredwrinkles of positive suffering, which made him look as old as Eleanor,who, dazed by the first very exciting thing that had ever happened toher,--the experience of being adored (and adored by a boy, which is aheady thing to a woman of her age!)--Eleanor was saying to herself adozen times a day: "I _mustn't_ say 'yes'! Oh, what _shall_ I do?" Thensuddenly there came a day when the rush of his passion decided what shewould do....

  Her aunt had announced that she was going to Europe. "I'm goin' to takeyou," Mrs. Newbolt said. "_I_ don't know what would become of you if Ileft you alone! You are about as capable as a baby. That was a greatphrase of your dear uncle Thomas's--'capable as a baby,' I'm perfectlysure the parlor ceilin' has got to be tinted this spring. When does yourschool close? We'll go the minute it closes. You can board Bingo withMrs. O'Brien."

  Eleanor, deeply hurt, was tempted to retort with the announcement thatshe needn't be "left alone"; she might get married! But she was silent;she never knew what to say when assailed by the older woman's tongue.She just wrote Maurice, helplessly, that she was going abroad.

  He was panic-stricken. Going abroad? Uncle Henry's ancient dame was ashe-devil, to carry her off! Then, in the midst of his anger, herecognized his opportunity: "The hell-cat has done me a good turn, I dobelieve! I'll get her! Bless the woman! I'll pay her passage myself, ifshe'll only go and never come back!"

  It was on the heels of Mrs. Newbolt's candor about Eleanor's"capableness" that he swept her resistance away. "You've _got_ to marryme," he told her; "that's all there is to it." He put his hand in hispocket and pulled out a marriage license. "I'll call for you to-morrowat ten; we'll go to the mayor's office. I've got it all fixed up. So,you see there's no getting out of it."

  "But," she protested, dazzled by the sheer, beautiful, impertinence ofit, "Maurice, I can't--I won't--I--"

  "You _will_," he said. "To-morrow's Saturday," he added, practically,"and there's no school, so you're free." He rose.... "Better leave aletter for your aunt. I'll be here at five minutes to ten. Be ready!" Hepaused and looked hard at her; caught her roughly in his arms, kissedher on her mouth, and walked out of the room.

  The mere violence of it lifted her into the Great Adventure! When hecommanded, "Be ready!" she, with a gasp, said, "Yes."

  Well; they had gone to the mayor's office, and been married; then theyhad got on a car and ridden through Mercer's dingy outskirts to the endof the route in Medfield, where, beyond suburban uglinesses, there wereglimpses of green fields.

  Once as the car rushed along, screeching around curves and banging overswitches, Eleanor said, "I've come out here four times a week for fouryears, to Fern Hill."

  And Maurice said: "Well, _that's_ over! No more school-teaching foryou!"

  She smiled, then sighed. "I'll miss my little people," sh
e said.

  But except for that they were silent. When they left the car, he led theway across a meadow to the bank of the river; there they sat down underthe locust, and he kissed her, quietly; then, for a while, still dumbwith the wonder of themselves, they watched the sky, and the sailingwhite clouds, and the river--flowing--flowing; and each other.

  "Fifty-four minutes," he had said....

  So they sat there and planned for the endless future--the "fifty-fouryears."

  "When we have our golden wedding," he said, "we shall come back here,and sit under this tree--" He paused; he would be--let's see: nineteen,plus fifty, makes sixty-nine. He did not go farther with his mentalarithmetic, and say thirty-nine plus fifty; he was thinking only ofhimself, not of her. In fifty years he would be, he told himself, an oldman.

  And what would happen in all these fifty golden years? "You know, longbefore that time, perhaps it won't be--just us?" he said.

  The color leaped to her face; she nodded, finding no words in which toexpand that joyous "perhaps," which touched the quick in her. Instantlythat sum in addition which he had not essayed in his own mind, becameunimportant in hers. What difference did the twenty severing years make,after all? Her heart rose with a bound--she had a quick vision of alittle head against her bosom! But she could not put it into words. Sheonly challenged, him:

  "I am not clever like you. Do you think you can love a stupid person forfifty years?"

  "For a thousand years!--but you're not stupid."

  She looked doubtful; then went on confessing: "Auntie says I'm a dummy,because I don't talk very much. And I'm awfully timid. And she says I'mjealous."

  "You don't talk because you're always thinking; that's one of the mostfascinating things about you, Eleanor,--you keep me wondering what onearth you're thinking about. It's the mystery of you that gets me! Andif you're 'timid'--well, so long as you're not afraid of me, the morescared you are, the better I like it. A man," said Maurice, "likes tofeel that he protects his--his wife." He paused and repeated the glowingword ... "his wife!" For a moment he could not go on with their carelesstalk; then he was practical again. That word "protect" was too robustfor sentimentality. "As for being jealous, that, about me, is a joke!And if you were, it would only mean that you loved me--so I would beflattered. I hope you'll be jealous! Eleanor, _promise_ me you'll bejealous?" They both laughed; then he said: "I've made up my mind to onething. I won't go back to college."

  "Oh, Maurice!"

  He was very matter of fact. "I'm a married man; I'm going to support mywife!" He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair in ridiculouspantomime of terrified responsibility. "Yes, sir! I'm out for dollars.Well, I'm glad I haven't any near relations to get on their ear, and tryand mind my business for me. Of course," he ruminated, "Bradley willkick like a steer, when I tell him he's bounced! But that will be onaccount of money. Oh, I'll pay him, all same," he said, largely. "Yes;I'm going to get a job." His face sobered into serious happiness. "Myallowance won't provide bones for Bingo! So it's business for me."

  She looked a little frightened. "Oh, have I made you go to work?" Shehad never asked him about money; she had plunged into matrimony withoutthe slightest knowledge of his income.

  "I'll chuck Bradley, and I'll chuck college," he announced, "I've gotto! Of course, ultimately, I'll have plenty of money. Mr. Houghton hasdry-nursed what father left me, and he has done mighty well with it; butI can't touch it till I'm twenty-five--worse luck! Father had theoriesabout a fellow being kept down to brass tacks and earning his living,before he inherited money another man had earned--that's the way he putit. Queer idea. So, I must get a job. Uncle Henry'll help me. You maybet on it that Mrs. Maurice Curtis shall not wash dishes, nor yet feedthe swine, but live on strawberries, sugar, and--What's the rest of it?"

  "I have a little money of my own," she said; "six hundred a year."

  "It will pay for your hairpins," he said, and put out his hand andtouched her hair--black, and very soft and wavy "but the strawberriesI shall provide."

  "I never thought about money," she confessed.

  "Of course not! Angels don't think about money."

  * * * * *

  "So they were married"; and in the meadow, fifty-fourminutes later, the sun and wind and moving shadows, and theriver--flowing--flowing--heralded the golden years, and endedthe saying: "_lived happy ever afterward_."